Vanguard News Network

The Eagles, live, Houston, 1977. [Video; 1 hour, 43 minutes].

Buddy Holly & The Crickets, “Peggy Sue.” Notice how they don’t need any fancy lighting or other stage gimmicks. Buddy Holly and Bill Haley were probably the only top rock acts who didn’t sing Black blues-based rock. Look at the Rolling Stones: totally Black-based. Led Zepp, too. (Of course, the later prog rock wasn’t blues-based, […]

Scottish/English singer Rod Stewart. It’s my understanding that the house in the video was his own house. A popular song in the 1970s, “Tonight’s the Night.” [Stewart video from 1976].

“I Started a Joke,” cover, by Allie Sherlock. [Song].

While 4-part-harmony “barbershop” music (meaning four men singing a cappella together, with no instruments used) was sometimes performed by Black people in the 1800s, it was largely a White thing, and it still is [1]. Today, PC historians try to claim that Blacks invented barbershop music. Nope. Blacks didn’t invent peanut butter, either. One of […]

Bridge of Sighs; 1974; by British rock guitarist Robin Trower (sounds like “power”). Vocals by James Dewar. [Video; duration is 37 minutes].

Jean-Philippe Rameau (French, 1683-1764). Rameau gets it: classical music should be bold, bright, fresh, hopeful, and non-sleep-inducing. Just as Shakespeare could turn a phrase, Rameau could turn a note. [Audio; 1 hour, 12 minutes].

Irish band The Cranberries in an acoustic performance. Sadly, the singer Dolores O’Riordan is dead now. She drowned due to alcohol intoxication in January 2018. [Video; duration is 19 minutes].

Alex once asked (paraphrasing) “how can Wagner be a musical genius when he only wrote one memorable piece of music (Ride of the Valkyries) and even that one isn’t exactly jaw-dropping?” Yes. He’s right. Most of the “musical geniuses” in history aren’t really geniuses. If you want Mozart and Beethoven, you can keep them. For […]

Lyrics: “Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss” Yeah. Anyway, love John Entwistle’s bass. When turned up, this song sounds like thunder, pretty heavy stuff (they always played very loud), and, a great laser show at the end. [Video].